I lost my job. I miss my mom. I wish my cat could talk.”
Underscoring the surf-rocky, boy-crazy music of Best Coast’s debut, Crazy For You, is the story of a pining homebody. But in the midst of its slacker, pack-a-bowl aesthetic, it’s the sort of pining that would have made Billie Holiday and Nina Simone proud.
Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno are Best Coast, the name a reference to west coast versus east coast rivalries, a feud in which they are decidedly biased. And while at first blush songs like lead single “Boyfriend” can – in the shallowest of interpretations – smack of Hilary Duff minus the fluff, there’s something going on behind the scenes of this starry-eyed, sunshine-soaked music.
Take for instance the motif of being “crazy,” right there in the album title. Cosentino cries “When you leave me, the bed is empty and I feel crazy,” on “Our Deal.” This song in particular deals in the things left unsaid that seem to tear at the singer’s peace of mind. Cosentino sings, “I wish you would tell me how you really feel, but you never tell me ’cause that’s not our deal.”
In the vein of Lady Day going tete-a-tete with those damn blues, the mood at hand on Crazy is a mixture of denial, girlish crushes and – in Cosentino’s case – the harsh reality of post-collegiate life rife with unrequited love and dim prospects.
The altering agents acting upon the psyche she lays lyrically bare are part emotional, part chemical to be sure. “Goodbye” – the same track that has Cosentino wishing for a more conversational feline – enumerates her guilty pleasures and their recent inability to please. “Nothing makes me happy,” she sighs, “not even TV or a bunch of weed.”
Crazy For You pays tribute to the sort of puppy love fare prevalent in the ’60s with Phil Spector girl groups, but the album’s retro-minded musicality is anything but regurgitated. While the majority of the 13 two-and-a-half-minute songs burst forth with fuzzy guitars, snare hits, backup vocals and surf pop tropes, there is the monster of those crazy blues always on the verge of rearing its ugly head.
The song “Honey” portrays this beast at its most domesticated – like Cosentino’s beloved cat, Snacks, illustrated in all his glory on Crazy’s cover. Unlike the majority of the album’s other tracks, “Honey” is the would-be triumphant he’s-mine-all-mine song, with the repeated titular pet name addressing the man at hand. But “Honey” is no triumph for Cupid. Not only is the music notably darker and more lethargic than at any other point on the album, but the lyrics exhibit some of the most exhaustive acts of denial that Crazy can boast: “You’re so good to me when you go away / but when you get home you don’t have much to say / It doesn’t matter to me either way / All I want is for you to stay.”
Having a man for a man’s sake furthers the crazy of Crazy, while also reinforcing its twitterpated yet sateless romantic antics. It’s the my-man-done-left-me blues, but with a twist: It’s two kids who can’t bother about the things left unsaid, and the complexities that remain in this codependent “deal” are numbed away either with denial or substances.
It’s the sort of thing that makes a song like the band’s early-on hit single “When I’m With You” – included on Crazy as a bonus track – all the more pertinent to this otherwise completely new collection of Cosentino’s songs. On that 2009 number, she sings, “The world is lazy, but you and me we’re just crazy / And when I’m with you I have fun.” At face value, it’s the carefree love of a new romance, flipping the bird to everyone else looking on. Within the context of Crazy, it’s the precursor of a theme that is self-consciously 420-friendly as it paint a modern portrait of those crazy, tormenting blues.
Taking some of the bite out of the blues divas’ sting, Best Coast deals in the sort of worlds we create for ourselves with the object of our desire ever-present in our minds and a spliff ever-present in our hands.